One of the most dominant land-owning families in turn-of-the-century Anne Arundel County Maryland emerged from a colonial-era carpenter who first set foot in America in Brunswick, New Jersey before staking a claim on the shores of Curtis Creek: the ageless Walter Pumphrey. The Pumphreys are a storied family in America who helped pioneer the American mid-Atlantic and midwest.

Walter, who arrived from England with meager resources aboard a Quaker ship immediately set out to carve a life in the new world. Although his resources were slight, he hailed from a proud family heritage. The family legend is that Walter was…

The swampy region on the south shore of the Patapsco River known as “South Patapsco” was becoming an important peninsula to Baltimore’s farmers and merchants in 1671. Nearly two hundred years later this wilderness area would become Brooklyn, Fairfield and Curtis Bay, a section of Baltimore that became noted for its industrial prowess.

But long before the era of coal piers and shipyards Baltimore was a wilderness area that England hoped to turn into an agricultural bohemeth. Cecil Calvert, the 2nd Lord Baltimore, was granting large tracts of lands in this area to farmers he hoped would help turn Maryland…

Epic Disaster Shook Curtis Bay with the Impact of a Tactical Nuclear Weapon

One of the worst worst maritime disasters in Baltimore history occurred when a stevedore aboard the British cargo steamer Alum Chine accidentally set off a blasting cap in the ship’s hold that ignited 350 tons of dynamite on Friday, March 7, 1913. The resulting fire set off a series of earthshaking explosions in the Patapsco River that killed 33 men, injured another 60, and shook buildings as far north as Philadelphia.

The tragedy was borne out of impatience, clumsiness, and quarreling among the ship’s crew and stevedores…

Motivated by dissatisfaction with local church leaders and the great distance between their homes and the only Protestant church, residents of South Patapsco asked the Presbyterian Church of England for permission to start their own house of worship in the spring of 1714. A year later the Presbyterian Church at Patapsco was formed, making it the first church in the swampy, wilderness area called South Patapsco, which later became Brooklyn and Curtis Bay.

Members of the congregation from the south side of the Patapsco River also lobbied church power brokers for a minister to tend the flock. After nearly a…

Long-Lost Story Describes Fortune Seekers Digging Deep in Hawkins Point

Pirates and privateers were a staple in the waters off Baltimore Town in the late 1600s and early 1700s. But did the legendary Bluebeard bury the spoils of his pirate conquests off the shores of Curtis Bay? Some turn-of-the century fortune seekers thought so and brought their shovels to find out.

The Curtis Bay–Bluebeard legend is buried in a lengthy June 6, 1910 article in the Baltimore Sun. In a story describing the “hive of industry” forming in Anne Arundel County’s Hawkins Point, the article discusses the area’s huge, but…

Two years before America’s torturous 13-year-long Prohibition experiment began in 1920, the United States’ War Department declared hundreds of bars, pubs, saloons, roadhouses, and resorts along the Patapsco River off-limits to servicemen and then took the extra step of closing saloons down entirely on short notice. Every drinking establishment in Curtis Bay, Fairfield, Masonville, and Brooklyn was shuttered. It came as a shock for local saloon owners and area residents, and there was no appeal process.

In the early 20th century, northern Anne Arundel County was a playground of sorts for Baltimore’s working class and elite. While the city’s temperance…

A bolt of lightning from a fast-moving summer storm was responsible for the most devastating fire in Brooklyn history on a July afternoon in 1920. The lightning bolt sparked an explosion and an intense blaze in two petroleum tanks on a 15-acre tank farm belonging to the U.S. Asphalt Refining Company near Stonehouse Cove. The resulting fire boiled the tanks over and sent a flood of burning crude oil rushing down Third Avenue, burning down 19 homes and leaving 39 uninhabitable in its wake. …

By Mary Ann McCormick

A tall, sturdy building remains standing on the southwest corner of Church Street and Pennington Avenue in Curtis Bay. The once-proud building used to be a grocery for some, a daycare center of sorts for others, and a gossip fence for still many more. Griber’s Grocery Store held an iconic place and role in the evolution of the hamlet of Curtis Bay. It was the community’s gathering place.

The Griber’s Grocery business didn’t start in this well-visited location. It began as a simple bakery on Cherry Street and Curtis Avenue in 1907. But Matewsz and Eva…